May 30, 2008 at 17:22Tasty Monster: the path to excellence
At age 14, a young American programmer Mike Matas created an icon-drawing business for OS X applications. At 15, he was invited to work at the Omni Group. But after graduation, he left the company. “It was fun to work at Omni. Unfortunately, the company has grown over the past year and the spirit of fun and creativity that I loved has begun to fade , ”says Mike.
He founded his company, Mad Softworks, and when Will Shipley left Omni, he cooperated with him. They named the new company Delicious Monster ("tasty monster", after the plant monstera deliciosa), and sat down to write the first product.
Create hype and exceed all expectations.
They decided to make a cool cataloger of books and CDs. Mike did the interface design, and Will wrote the code. In November 2004, the first version of the Delicious Library was released. In the first month, copies of $ 250,000 were sold, and not a cent was spent on advertising.
Due to its unique functionality (books are located on virtual shelves, and adding them to the catalog is as simple as possible: scan the barcode through a webcam, and the Delicious Library itself downloads information about the book from Amazon) the program created a stir in the press. And thanks to a really convenient and beautiful interface, it exceeded user expectations.
Work without restraint
$ 250,000 for the first month of sales is success, and of course, an occasion for new articles in newspapers and magazines. But one of the most interesting facts was that Will and Mike worked in a coffee shop.
In addition to delicious coffee, Zoka Cafe has free Wi-Fi, large tables and sockets at each table. It was there that Delicious Monster worked and still work. Before the cafe, when the company was just beginning its journey, Will made an office at home, but the company worked there for only a week.
The success of Delicious Monster and Mike's stunning work as a designer for the Library interface led him to be invited to work at Apple. They are currently working on the next version of the Delicious Library, which has already won the “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application” award .
Well, who else doubts the success of the “for free work” movement? :)
(via Munga.ru and Sellme.ru )
He founded his company, Mad Softworks, and when Will Shipley left Omni, he cooperated with him. They named the new company Delicious Monster ("tasty monster", after the plant monstera deliciosa), and sat down to write the first product.
There were several shareware products of this type on the market. Mike looked at them and said: “If so many shareware products do the same thing, then there probably is a market for a very elegant program that does this . ” I call this the iTunes approach: Apple did not invent the MP3 library and player, but they did them very, very well.
Will shipley
Create hype and exceed all expectations.
They decided to make a cool cataloger of books and CDs. Mike did the interface design, and Will wrote the code. In November 2004, the first version of the Delicious Library was released. In the first month, copies of $ 250,000 were sold, and not a cent was spent on advertising.
Due to its unique functionality (books are located on virtual shelves, and adding them to the catalog is as simple as possible: scan the barcode through a webcam, and the Delicious Library itself downloads information about the book from Amazon) the program created a stir in the press. And thanks to a really convenient and beautiful interface, it exceeded user expectations.
Work without restraint
$ 250,000 for the first month of sales is success, and of course, an occasion for new articles in newspapers and magazines. But one of the most interesting facts was that Will and Mike worked in a coffee shop.
In addition to delicious coffee, Zoka Cafe has free Wi-Fi, large tables and sockets at each table. It was there that Delicious Monster worked and still work. Before the cafe, when the company was just beginning its journey, Will made an office at home, but the company worked there for only a week.
The success of Delicious Monster and Mike's stunning work as a designer for the Library interface led him to be invited to work at Apple. They are currently working on the next version of the Delicious Library, which has already won the “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application” award .
Well, who else doubts the success of the “for free work” movement? :)
(via Munga.ru and Sellme.ru )